


Dear Sam

by asexualshepard



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Gun Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 19:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexualshepard/pseuds/asexualshepard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean was four, and the safety was off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Sam

John Winchester, an expert mechanic, took two weeks off every year – one in the spring and one in the fall. During those weeks, he would immerse himself and a friend of his choosing in woodlands and swamps and hills and lowlands. With a shotgun on his shoulder and a small pack on his back, he would trek through the wildlife. For the most part, it was just hiking, but he would shoot something on occasion, normally nothing larger than a rabbit. On special trips, he would go solely for larger game. He’d once brought home a grizzly bear that served as wonderful rug in the den.

His rifles and shotguns were kept in a gun cabinet he made in his senior year of high school. Every groove and notch of the cabinet had been carved with a v-gouge and a steady hand. The oak was stained a dark cherry type color; the sofa and chairs had been specifically picked to match it so both could sit in the den without clashing, which had been an endless pain for Mary. Two thin panes of glass separated the guns from the rest of the room, and the cabinet had no lock.

It was a Saturday towards the end of September when John returned from his fall hunting trip. He wasn’t surprised when Dean was the first one to emerge from the house and onto the driveway.

John and Mary had two sons. Their eldest, Dean, was four years old; that was four years of worshipping the ground his father walked on. Whatever John asked, Dean would do it in a heartbeat. When he was two, he’d told John that he was going to become a mechanic and get married and have a shiny, black 1967 Impala, just like his dad.

Sam was nearly five months old. Part of John had wanted to skip his hunting trip to stay home and help with Sammy, but he hadn’t missed a trip in his life. His step father had first taken him when he was thirteen, and he’d gone without fail for the next seventeen. Mary had been thoroughly upset with him, but John had gone anyways.

“Daddy!” Dean shouted, his face lighting up as he ran across the dying, wilting lawn.

John gently set his rifle case on the pavement and held out his arms. Dean ran into them, just as he always did. Mary emerged from the house moments later – Sam nestled against her chest – and couldn’t keep the small smile from turning the corners of her lips upwards.

Dean told John about the drawings of the Impala he’d done while John was away as they approached the house, John carrying his rifle in one hand and holding Dean in the other. The four-year-old’s mouth didn’t stop moving through the five minutes it took for the both of them to make it into the den.

John set his rifle near the gun cabinet, just leaning against the sharp corner.

Even then, as John settled onto the couch, Dean showed his father the drawings, and even went so far as to show John how to draw tires. Mary wandered in and gently set Sam in John’s accepting arms. John kissed her cheek and she left to go fix dinner, leaving John with his sons.

The TV came on at some point, distracting Dean only for a moment before he continued. He talked until he could talk no more. Eventually, the events of his week ran dry, and he could find nothing more to tell his father. So John started talking. He told Dean everything about his trip, just as he always did. About the animals and the mountains and the trees and how Bobby – John’s usual hunting buddy – almost broke his leg.

Dean hopped onto the couch beside his father and leaned over to look at Sam, who was grinning up at the ceiling.

“Sammy and I are gonna come with you one day, right?” he questioned.

John smiled. “Of course you are.”

“Can we get a bear for my room?”

John chuckled, but nodded nonetheless.

“John, can you come help me for a moment?” Mary called from the kitchen.

John got to his feet and set Sam on the small, blue blanket that Missouri, a family friend, had knitted for him. Sam giggled – a high pitched sound that made the den feel quiet – and reached out towards John as he stood.

“Watch your brother, Dean.”

The four-year-old nodded vigorously, his long hair flopping in front of his eyes. John reached out to lovingly run his fingers through it and get it out of his eyes. Dean grinned, and John made his way out of the den.

He was only gone for two minutes.

Only two.

But two was enough.

The sound would haunt the house for as long as the foundation stood. The echoes bounced off of the walls and tortured the ears of those forced to hear it, worming its way into their memories. Mary dropped the bowl that she’d picked up seconds prior, the shattering mingling with the uncomfortable silence that had swarmed.  She ran from the kitchen and towards the den. John stood still.

He knew that sound all too well. He’d heard it hundreds of times, but never in his home. Never in the space that had seemed so full only moments ago. The walls darkened. The silence was louder than any gunshot. And then a scream, one that caused John to finally move from his spot.

The first thing he saw upon entering the den was the bearskin rug. The strands of fur clung together, darker than they’d been when he’d left the room. Sam’s baby-blue blanket had turned a sickly purples color at spots, and Sam’s name – which had been embroidered in the corner in white – was stained red.

His eyes unfocused as Mary leaned backwards and threw her head back, revealing Sam’s body. Her arms were covered in a sticky red substance. So was Sam’s Onesie.

And then he saw everything else. All of it at once. The open rifle case, Dean’s frightened eyes, the gun in his hands. It was all there, laid out in front of him, but he wouldn’t believe it. He couldn’t.

“Sammy?” Dean’s voice broke halfway through the two-syllable name. “Sammy, wake up.”

The rifle fell to the ground with a thump, and Dean’s face screwed up in fear and pain and guilt as he ran to John’s side. He grappled onto John’s leg.

John unwound him. He gently pushed his son back onto the couch.

It was John who put the rifle away, and John who pried Mary from Sam’s unmoving body. John was the one who wrapped Sam in his blood-soaked blanket.

And John didn’t cry until no one else was watching.

+

The nightmares started when Dean was six. For two years his parents had tried and succeeded to keep him away from the news. Gun violence was everywhere, and neither of them knew what might trigger him. They’d been stupid to think they could hide it from him forever. In the end, it had been the images on the front page of the newspapers on the stand downtown that had sent him back into the dark hole he’d managed to nearly crawl out of.

With the nightmares, he would wake in the middle of the night, screams and shouts being rung from his vocal chords as he relived his brother’s death. The tears would only stop when Mary held him and quietly sang _Hey Jude_. The following day, it would be like nothing had happened. It would be like everything was normal, because, technically, it was.

The dreams didn’t come every night. At least, not at first. There would be days, sometimes weeks between them. Dean would sleep soundly through one night, and then scream in emotional agony the next. A year passed, and they managed it as well as they could.

But then the nightmares became more frequent. Every other night he would wake up with his jaw pulled open, a shrill scream echoing against the walls of his small bedroom in the new house in South Dakota that they’d bought shortly after the accident. It soon became too much, not just for him but for his mother as well. It was an easy decision to get him an appointment with a therapist. In fact, Mary couldn’t help but feel that it was overdue.

There was a smile on Dean’s face when he and his mother had first walked through the front doors of a high-rise in Sioux Falls. It was a Thursday afternoon, and Mary had pulled Dean from school. She normally would have taken him later in the day or during a weekend, but Dr. Wyatt – a man who had been recommended by a friend – only had that one open spot for the week.

Dr. Wyatt’s office was on the sixth floor of the building, and only occupied a fourth of it. They were told to sit in the small, cramped waiting room until Dr. Wyatt was ready for them.  Dean occupied himself with one of the many cardboard books stacked up on a small table in the corner. He was an exceptional reader, for his age.

He’d gotten through three different books when a tall man who was dressed well and wearing a smile on his long face stepped into the waiting room. He held his hand out to Mary.

“I’m Dr. Nathaniel Wyatt,” he introduced himself as Mary shook the hand he’d offered, “but, please, call me Nate.”

“I’m Mary Winchester,” she muttered, turning towards the boy still sitting on the floor, “and this is my son, Dean.”

Dr. Wyatt looked towards Dean, who was watching the interaction with wide, green eyes. With yet another grin, Dr. Wyatt sat down beside him, his long legs folding just as Dean’s had.

“What are you reading?” he inquired.

Dean flipped the book in his hands shut, revealing a colorful drawing of a dog a hundred times the size of any other dog.

“Clifford, huh? He’s my favorite.”

Dean nodded and looked down at the cover. “We read Clifford at school yesterday.”

“Which one?”

“ _Clifford’s Bedtime Story_.”

“That’s the one where Emily accidentally falls asleep in Clifford’s dog house, right?”

Dean nodded again.

“Kinda makes you want a dog to cuddle with, right?”

This time, Dean shook his head.

Dr. Wyatt tilted his head to the side. “Why not?”

Dean shrugged. “I don’t like dogs.”

“Do you like cats?”

“No, I’m allergic.”

“Gerbils?”

Dean’s brow furrowed. “What’s a gerbil?”

Dr. Wyatt smiled. “C’mon, I’ll show you a picture,” he uttered as he got to his feet. Dean stood with him.

Mary grabbed Dean’s hand and, together, the three of them crossed the room.  Dr. Wyatt opened a door in the corner of the waiting room. Mary gently tugged Dean into the space on the other side, and Dr. Wyatt gestured for the both of them to sit on the soft, brown couch that was pressed tightly against the wall.

Mary glanced around the room. It was only slightly larger than the cramped waiting room had been, and the dark green walls made it seem even smaller. Dr. Wyatt’s desk – though small – took up much of the room. Papers and manila folders were scattered across the surface, and his laptop whirred as he began typing quickly. He only took a few moments, and then he was grinning at the pair on the sofa again.

“Here, this is what a gerbil looks like,” he said, twisting the laptop so Dean could see the screen.

“It looks like a mouse.”

“They’re from the same general family of animals, so that makes sense, I guess.”

“Why would anyone want one of those as a pet?”

“Because they’re cute and warm and they’ll crawl around on your shoulders.”

“Wouldn’t that feel… weird?”

“At first, but the more you let it sit on your shoulder the more you fide the presence comforting, maybe.”

“Are they soft?”

“Most of them.”

Dean was quiet then, a look of deep contemplation on his face. Mary could already hear the question. She knew her son, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to say no.

“Mommy, can I get a gerbil?”

Mary smiled. “We’ll talk to your dad about it, okay?”

Dean grinned, and Mary tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her gut. She knew what John would say just as she’d known what Dean would ask. The answer would be no. It had always been no. When she’d inquired after a puppy – one to teach Dean responsibility – John had flatly stated that he wouldn’t allow Dean to be responsible for the life of a helpless little dog. When John came home late that night, Mary could smell the soil on his clothes. It was the same smell he carried into the house whenever he’d spent a few hours sleeping in the cemetery.

And that was the reason Dean never got a gerbil.

+

When Dean turned sixteen, John gave him the ’67 Chevy Impala that had been sitting in the backyard. He told Dean that if he could fix it, it was his. Dean took the chance. The only thing John had ever given him was lectures, so even the bent and rusted classic car was a step up.

With permission, he moved the car into the backyard of Bobby Singer. Bobby was the owner of a salvage yard on the edge of town, one the Winchester family had grown close to since they moved. Dean would often spend weekends at Bobby’s, helping with the mechanic service and cleaning up in the shop, and sometimes even weeks in the summer. Bobby became the father that John hadn’t been.

Bobby let him put the Impala beneath the tin roof that was held up by stilts and covered Bobby’s own beat-up car. Dean would stop by whenever he could and put a few hours into her, bending back the frame and taking the engine apart. When the first sweltering week of summer struck, Dean hardly went home. Mary worried and would visit occasionally to make sure he was okay, and that Bobby was alright with her son commandeering his sofa. John pretended not to notice.

It took all summer. She wasn’t perfect. The leather of her seats was still torn in places and every now and then she would stall. But she ran, and she ran far. For the first time in years, Dean felt free. He could go where he wanted, when he wanted, even if those places were really only Bobby’s, school, and the movie theater. During the first week she was running, Dean would make Mary let him drive her to the store when they ran out of milk or eggs.

For the first few months, he refused to drive himself to his appointments. He and Bobby hadn’t worked out all of the kinks in the locks at that point, and even if he kept his keys in his pocket while he went to talk to Dr. Wyatt he didn’t want to risk it. It was downtown Sioux Falls, after all.

When he did drive himself, however, Dr. Wyatt met him in the parking lot. It was a Wednesday afternoon, right after school. Dean’s textbooks had been thrown haphazardly into the back seat of the Impala in his rush to get to the office on time and half of them had fallen to the floor; he wouldn’t be surprised if pages had folded over.

“This is the car?” Dr. Wyatt asked, examining the recently painted black body.

“No,” Dean started, swatting at Dr. Wyatt’s hand as he reached out to touch the metal over the trunk, “this is my soul so don’t touch it.”

The therapist smiled and shook his head. “I got some Chow Mein, if you want some.”

“Sweet,” Dean grinned, locking the Impala’s doors and following Dr. Wyatt towards the doors of the high-rise.

Dr. Wyatt was a child therapist. He knew it was unprofessional to keep Dean on as he was technically a young adult and should be seeing someone who was trained to understand his lifestyle. He’d brought it up once when Dean was fourteen, but the teenage boy had denied and said he wouldn’t feel comfortable. Though the doctor had understood – when you see the same therapist for ten years switching is not an easy thing – he still felt like it wasn’t an appropriate relationship. He didn’t refer to Dean as a patient anymore, he was a friend; it was the only way he could see to justify doing what he was doing.

Together, the two of them walked in comfortable silence to the elevator, and then continued with that silence throughout the entire ride up. It wasn’t until they were in Dr. Wyatt’s office that either of them said anything.

“Food’s on my desk!” Dr. Wyatt called as he wandered into the small closet where things like patient files and craft supplies were kept.

Dean wandered over to the mahogany desk and found two of those white Chinese carry-out boxes sitting there. One had been opened and the other sat closed, the chopsticks sitting on the top with the plastic still around them. Dean grabbed the package by the little wire handle and threw himself onto the sofa that was five times too small. He’d only just opened the box when Dr. Wyatt reemerged.

“Oh, Doc, c’mon,” Dean moaned when he saw the familiar red notebook and black pen held loosely in Dr. Wyatt’s large hand. “Not again.”

“The last time I had you try was a year ago, Dean. I’m gonna make you do it either until you successfully complete a letter or I stop seeing you.”

The notebook and pen were passed between hands and Dean stopped to sneer for a moment. This wasn’t the only notebook with only two words printed on each page in increasingly legible handwriting. Before the red there had been a blue notebook, and a green one before that. Sometimes there had even been miscellaneous pages from the printer. In Dean’s opinion, it was a waste of paper.

He set his food aside and uncapped the pen using his mouth, his free hand flipping through the blank pages as he scanned the top left hand corners. When he came to a blank page, he stopped, set the pen on the paper, and wrote the words “Dear Sam.”

Then he stared.

The amount of time he’d spent staring at a blank sheet of paper in his time with Dr. Wyatt was large. He could never find the right words for all of the things he wanted to say. And, when he thought about it, he really didn’t want to say them. He didn’t want to think about them, because that led to thinking about what he’d done – how he’d ruined his family.

Finally, he dropped the notebook onto the coffee table covered in finger paint and permanent marker.

No words were exchanged as Dr. Wyatt took the pad of lined paper and carried it back to the closet, setting it in the corner with all of the others.

+

Angels’ Bar was a small, grungy thing that sat in between a tattoo parlor and a bank. It had a grand total of eight staff members – three women and five men – one of which was the owner. It had a steady stream of regular customers and new faces were hard to come by in such a place, but they did appear every once in a while.

That’s why, when a young, wide-eyed college student stopped in for a beer after his finals, people stopped to look at him. He was tall; not unusually tall, but tall nonetheless. His hair was dark and unruly, which made sense as he’d been running his hands through it out of stress all afternoon, but it was still usually that way. He’d only tried to tame it once before learning that it couldn’t be done.

This college student was named Castiel Novak. He was a physics major at Columbia, there only because of his immaculate grades and his involvement in his community. He was respectable and quiet and everything his parents had hoped he would grow up to be, especially after the sudden loss of his twin, Jimmy, some years prior. Though he drank, he’d never been drunk, and a cigarette had never touched his lips.  He was careful, cautious.

He surprised himself when he walked into the dingy bar he happened across on his way home. If he drank, it was almost always within the safety of the small apartment he rented. He’d never once been to a bar – especially not on his own and in an area such as the one Angels’ was located in. Later he’d blame it on the stress of finals and the relief that they were over. For that moment, however, he went with it.

He went back again the next week. And then the next. And the week after that. It took several visits for him to understand why he kept going back. After Jimmy’s death, his parents had pulled away from him. The two were identical, so he understood that his appearance caused them pain, but it still hurt. Family had quickly become a foreign object to him.

It was family that he found at Angels’. The bartender had teased him like they’d been friends for years, and one of the other employees had jumped in after an hour or so. Castiel – for some reason – felt comfortable enough to tease back. It was different from the feeling of “family” he had with his parents or his classmates.  He could make jokes and smile and not worry. It made him happy.

Every week for another year and a half he went to Angels’. All of the employees knew him by name, and he’d even filled a few spots when one of them had been sick or unable to make it to work. It was at that time that Ellen – the bar’s owner – offered Castiel a job. He happily took it. Up to that point he had been relying on savings for rent.

He’d gone into the job with the intentions of leaving after he graduated, to _use_ the doctorate he earned. When the day came, though, and the only people there to support him were Ellen, Balthazar, and Gabe (the latter two being the employees who teased him his first time at Angels’), he couldn’t get himself to leave. No matter how many times he waved a nice, expensive apartment in his face or thought about his lack of benefits, he couldn’t get himself to write the letter of resignation he knew Ellen was expecting.

That’s why he was still there when the new guy arrived. Angels’ hardly ever hired people – Castiel had been the first in years – and when a young man started busing tables without any word from Ellen, it drew some odd stares.

Castiel was working behind the bar that day. Half of the staff wasn’t there due to it being a Sunday afternoon, and he watched as the boy scrubbed down tables two, three times in a desperate attempt to do something. It was too slow to actually do productive work. With any of the other employees, he would’ve started a conversation. He might’ve even played a game of darts had Gabe been there. Instead, he observed.

The boy couldn’t have been any older than nineteen, and he had an innocent quality surrounding him that Castiel could see right through. It was a manufactured quality, one to hide secrets. Castiel had had many friends with that same quality in high school; it was the only reason he didn’t believe that the boy was innocent in any form of the word. The more he watched, the more he saw. The boy’s eyes were green. He was taller than Castiel. He was focused and steady, both of which were strange to find in a teenager.

Eventually, he wandered back to find Ellen reading a magazine in the kitchen. When he asked who he was, she just waved her hand and said, “Dean.” And that was all until the others arrived to start the evening shift.

Gabriel, always sociable, immediately started to poke “Dean” and ask him questions so quickly not a single answer was given. Castiel watched from behind the counter. After years of working with the man, he’d gotten used to Gabe and his annoying, offensive sense of humor, but Dean hadn’t gotten that chance. Castiel could see it in the boy’s eyebrows – the irritation. That isn’t to say he did anything to aid him, though. He’d have to get used to it sooner or later, might as well start then.

When his shift ended, Dean grabbed his coat, said goodbye to Ellen, and left. Nothing was said to his coworkers. No one noticed his absence except for Castiel.

+

Years passed. Castiel remained the same. He worked at the same place, saw the same people, did the same things. Dean did not. He would disappear without word, though Ellen always seemed to have heard from him and just didn’t tell the other employees. Castiel was the only one who noticed. Dean had formed no attachments, had spoken to them only when he needed to. He distanced himself.

When he disappeared, he would stay gone – how long varied. The shortest time had been a week and the longest half a year. He always came back, though. He’d walk in and find Ellen and then begin working the same hours he’d always worked. Everyone noticed when he returned, but no one really took it upon themselves to care all that much. He was the only employee that never attended their social functions or stayed longer than his hours required him to.

Castiel never spoke to him. There had been a few times where he’d wanted to, but the chance never really arose. Dean was blunt and to the point. Their conversations consisted of customer orders and that was it. That didn’t mean that Castiel hadn’t looked after him, though. Dean wasn’t just the most reserved of the staff, but he was also the youngest. The youth in his face drew some unsavory comments from irregular customers, so though it didn’t happen often, it did happen, and Castiel happily told them to pay their bill and leave the establishment.

Dean’s youth was fading fast, though. Every time he came back from a disappearance he had new wrinkles on his forehead that no one his age should have. His eyes looked even older. They lost the shine that had been there his first day on the job, no matter how miniscule that shine had been in the first place. The color drained more and more each day, but Castiel only noticed upon his random returns. When he decided to sum it up one afternoon, Castiel decided that Dean looked tired and sad.

When Dean came in on a Wednesday at the beginning of May nearly four years after he’d first appeared at Angels’, he looked different. Castiel thought he looked twice his age. He spent half of his time sitting in the corner booth, not actually working, just staring at himself in the shine of the polished wooden table.

When the lunch hour started and people began filing in, Dean stood. Castiel watched from behind the bar as he went to take a customer’s order. He dropped his pen. When he tore the order off of his notepad and handed it to Castiel so he could put the order through, the writing was unintelligible. Castiel had seen enough of Dean’s handwriting in the last four years to know that what he was looking at wasn’t it.

“Dean, I can’t read this,” he said, holding it out to the boy (because – no matter what his eyes or forehead said – Dean _was_ still a boy).

Dean took it and pulled out his pen, squinting at the words he’d written. When he put the pen to the paper, Castiel saw the reason behind his newfound poor penmanship. His hands were shaking. Not just a gentle tremor, no, it was as if Dean’s bones had decided a bodily earthquake was in order.

Dean rewrote everything and slid it back to Castiel. He stood there, waiting, looking for Castiel’s seal of approval. Though the larger letters could be read, it was still illegible for the most part.

“Are you alright, Dean?”

Dean opened his mouth to speak, but swallowed around the words and simply nodded instead. His hands flexed at his sides.

“Yeah, um, sorry. Just— sorry.”

His shoulders tightened, he took a shallow breath, and then he ran in the opposite direction. Perhaps running is an inaccurate description. He didn’t run so much as he stumbled, his limbs drawn in towards his torso as he headed towards the back.

When he emerged, he had his coat in his arms and his apron removed. He avoided Castiel’s eyes as he made his way to the door, pressing his hands into each other as those who had arthritis sometimes did.

+

Castiel worried about Dean through the last few hours of his shift. They were in no way close, and it wasn’t Castiel’s responsibility to worry about him, but he did anyways. When he asked, Ellen told him that there were things she couldn’t tell him about Dean, things that only Dean should say. Castiel completely understood that. He still remembered classmates walking up to him in the hallway and saying, “Hey, heard your brother died!”

Understanding didn’t mean he wasn’t curious, though. Everyone went through shit, Castiel knew that, but some shit was deeper than others, and some people ended up walking through a manure field.

It bothered him until Balthazar showed up to take his place for the night shift. The feeling was hard to explain. It was like Dean’s problems were a bar, but the owner turned off the neon ‘open’ sign every time it flicked itself on. Even that doesn’t completely explain Castiel’s thought process as he wandered into the back to get his coat, or why he asked Ellen for Dean’s address.

She’d hesitated to give it to him. Dean had probably asked her not to share it with anyone – it wouldn’t surprise Castiel if he had. But she did. He saw a flash of some emotion akin to worry in her eyes right before she took out his file (because all employees had a file) and copied it down.

He committed the words to memory. Though he’d lived in New York for nearly half his life, he would’ve needed a map to place the address. Cab drivers, however, could take you anywhere.

He thought about what he was doing – why he was doing it – throughout the entire journey. He couldn’t give himself an answer. Towards the end he looked down at his hands, examining the lines for no apparent reason. The cab eventually stopped moving, and Castiel paid for the ride before stepping out onto the sidewalk.

He was in a neighborhood, apartment buildings surrounding him on all sides. The alleyways were small and dark, gum littered the sidewalks, and cigarette butts had been stomped out at the bottoms of staircases. No cars were parked along the curb. Half of the street lights had burnt out bulbs. Orange lights slipped through windows – not enough to light the street, but enough to make your way by.

The cab driver obviously knew the area well as he’d dropped Castiel off at the exact apartment building listed on the paper in his hand. It was only as he reached the front door that he realized that Dean would have to buzz him in.

He stepped up to the panel with the names of the residents listed, each placed next to a button that had – at one time – been white. Dean’s name was somewhere in the middle. His last name was Winchester. In the four years they’d known each other, Castiel had never heard Dean’s last name mentioned.

After a moment of hesitation, Castiel pressed the button.

He waited a minute. When no one responded, he entertained the idea that Dean wasn’t home, that he was out. It seemed unlikely for a reason Castiel couldn’t name if asked; he had a gut feeling that Dean wasn’t out that night. Actually, he had a feeling Dean was never out.

So, he reached out and poked the button again. This time, there were a few moments of silence, and then a voice emerged from the speaker.

“The fuck’re you?”

Castiel was startled by the anger in the tone. It was Dean’s voice – not even the static of the poor speaker system could hide that – but it didn’t sound like Dean, at least not the one Castiel saw every day at work. This Dean was loud and assertive, not reserved in the way Castiel had seen him for the last four years.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, now who’re you?”

“Um, Castiel, from work.”

There was silence on the other end, but Castiel could almost feel the wheels turning in Dean’s head. He was contemplating whether or not to let Castiel in.

Finally, there was a loud buzz and the door opened. Castiel was quick to jump into the building, in case Dean changed his mind. Dean was in apartment 112, which meant Castiel didn’t need to climb any stairs or use an elevator. He used the numbers on other doors to find his way, and was staring it down within moments.

He didn’t stop to think before knocking, he simply did it. There was a pause, and then the door opened, albeit slowly. Dean appeared on the other end.

His face was pasty, covered in a shimmering layer of sweat. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair sticking up in varying directions, and his eyes red. Whether he was tired, had been crying, or something else completely, Castiel didn’t know. He didn’t dwell on it long, though, after seeing the large bottle of cheap whiskey hanging from the boy’s fingertips.

“Dean, are you drunk?”

Dean pushed the door open and stepped to the side. “Almost.”

Castiel stepped into the apartment and quickly surveyed his surroundings. It was small, but large enough for one person to be comfortable, he supposed. The TV was old, the sofa had holes in its fabric, and there were numerous stains on the carpet. The light bulb in the small kitchen flickered, hanging without a shade over a tiny, circular table. There was a glass sitting on the table, once filled with whiskey but long abandoned in favor of a bottle with a slender neck.

“Are you alright?”

Dean sneered and slammed the door shut. “Stop asking questions.”

Castiel watched as Dean stalked over to the sofa and lay down on it, the back of the piece of furniture hiding him from Castiel’s view. The TV turned on. As Castiel wandered closer, it flicked through the stations, past procedural cop shows and the news only to turn off again as Castiel found himself neck and neck with the arm of the couch. Dean leaned forward just enough to not spill whiskey down his shirt as he drank from the bottle. When he was done, he held it out to Castiel.

“Oh, no thank you.”

Dean shrugged. “Suit yourself, Columbo,” he uttered, setting the bottle on the floor and rolling over to face the back of the couch.

Castiel ignored the reference, tugging at the sleeve of his trench coat (which he’d worn for nearly six years now and had only needed to patch once, thank you very much) before looking around the living room again. That is, if it could be called a living room. It was more a cupboard with furniture. Besides the sofa, there were no other chairs, which made sense for a 22-year-old man living on his own in New York. The TV occupied the nearest corner, and a small coffee table sat between the two aforementioned items. On the coffee table sat something that – to Castiel – felt out of place.

It was a college ruled notebook, flipped open to the first page. A cheap pen from a bank sat atop it. Castiel didn’t see what was written on it until after he’d wandered around the room a bit more, over towards the TV, glancing down the cramped hall, and then back.

He reached out and wrapped the tips of his fingers around the metal spiral holding it together. When he stopped, it was only to make sure Dean wasn’t going to object. The boy didn’t move, so Castiel tugged it across the table and lifted it nearer to his face.

“Who’s Sam?” he asked.

He didn’t see Dean’s shoulders tighten at the name. If he had, he wouldn’t have said anything more.

“I suppose your family doesn’t live in New York, correct? Is it one of them?”

Dean curled into himself.

“Dean?”

No response.

“Dean, are you—”

“God, Cas, shut the _fuck_ up!”

Castiel was quiet for a moment, watching as Dean pulled his knees closer to his chest, his arms coming up to hide his face. His back shifted all too quickly with his breath, and every now and then Castiel would hear a muffled gasp come from beneath his biceps.

The only thing Castiel could think to do was take the bottle of whiskey, pour it down the sink, and wait until Dean fell into a drunken sleep to leave him on his own. Halfway home he’d realize he should’ve just stayed, just in case.

+

Castiel didn’t expect Dean to come to work the next day, but he did. He showed up, hung-over but relatively on time, and completely avoided Castiel all day long. Castiel didn’t _know_ if he remembered the events of the night before, but he’d wager his physics degree that he did.

All of the orders were written in the familiar slanting script that had taken a vacation the day before. Every time he gave Castiel an order that needed to be filled, he avoided eye contact completely. Most of the time he just set the order on the bar and turned to do something else. Sometimes, though, he would hesitate. He’d set the order down and stop for a moment, staring at the bar. The hesitations happened more and more the later it got in the afternoon.

Dean’s shift ended at five. Castiel expected him to ditch his apron, grab his coat, and leave, just like any other day, but he didn’t. He went in the back, yes, but when he returned with his jacket on his shoulders, he wandered over and slowly sat on one of the stools in front of the bar.

“Dean?”

Dean sighed and leaned forward, folding his forearms over each other and resting his elbows on the bar. He looked everywhere but at Castiel. His jaw clenched and unclenched with every shift of his Adams apple.

“Thanks.”

Castiel’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What for?”

“Last night.”

Castiel nodded, but said nothing. He’d made a mistake the night before. He didn’t want to do it again.

“Sam’s my brother.”

“Dean—”

“He would’ve been eighteen yesterday.”

Castiel’s eyes darkened a shade. “Would’ve.”

Dean nodded, his lips pulling down sharply at the corners in an attempt to stop his eyes from watering. The only reason Castiel noticed is that that little movement didn’t help.

“I still – I mean – I can’t talk about it but,” Dean said, pausing to pull a few pieces of paper folded together from his jacket pocket, “if you wanna know, here.” He shoved the papers into Castiel’s hand and stood. He didn’t wait for Castiel’s reaction, he simply left.

After Dean was gone, Castiel looked down at the papers in his hand. They were photocopies of a newspaper article from 1983.

He needed nothing more than the title – short, blunt, and to the point – to understand exactly _why_ Dean couldn’t talk about it.

+

Dean rubbed his palms against the worn knees of his jeans, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips nervously. He didn’t quite understand why he was nervous, but he didn’t question it; a lot of things made him irrationally nervous, why shouldn’t this one?

Natural light streamed in through the window of his apartment, which was larger and nicer than his previous one. He’d put some money into new furniture and a decent coffee maker (which was totally worth it; he was never going back to cheap coffee ever again), and the rent he paid for the apartment itself was far more than what he’d been paying, but low enough that it was affordable.

The TV – really the only thing that hadn’t been replaced – was off and silent. He didn’t want any distractions, such as the new episode of _Dr. Sexy_ that he had the DVR set to record. The radio in the kitchen was on but not loud enough that Dean could make out what was being played or said. He just needed it on so it wasn’t completely silent.

He flexed his fingers as he stared at the notebook and pen sitting on the glass of his new coffee table. He couldn’t decide if he was too sober for this or not sober enough.

When his hands started shaking, he stood and walked around a bit. His phone was a heavy presence in his pocket; he knew Cas was waiting for him to call for exactly the reason he wanted to do so, but he also didn’t want to. He felt like he could do it, he just needed to start.

So, one more lap later, he sat down on the floor in front of the coffee table, grabbed the pen, and began writing just as he always had while he was seeing Dr. Wyatt. The only difference this time was that he didn’t stop after ‘Dear Sam.’

_Dear Sam,_

_Happy 21 st, Sammy._


End file.
